Because you’re fascinated by sound!
Sound is literally everywhere! With sight, you can still block it out by merely shutting your eyes! But sound, it’s almost impossible to completely block-out. At night when you’re trying to sleep, it’s not actually quiet. Yeah? You especially notice it if you can’t sleep e.g. hearing the ticking of an analogue clock, the hum of a street lamp, the hiss of a nearby ventilation system, and when you try to cover your ears in frustration with the blanket and pillo- then you’ll realise you can hear your pulse in your ears! Ah! And when someone says “Guess what happened in last night’s episode?” And you quickly cover your ears, stopping yourself from hearing them spoil a show that you have DVR and hadn’t had a chance to watch? Well, clamping your hands over your ears only stops you from hearing their voice, but you still hear that seashell ocean affect in your ears. So it’s almost impossible to block out sound from your life.
Thus, no matter what you find fascinating in life, shouldn’t we all be fascinated by sound? Because it’s literally all around us?
And here steps in the boys and girls at Defacto Sound who are the creators behind the podcast Twenty Thousand Hertz! They fill this sound void in the podcast-a-sphere, filling the lack of interest in producing a pod only about sound! **Note: I think they’re the only ones who produce a pod similar to what they have created.
Host Dallas Taylor takes you and your ears on an audible journey through sound, not only is their mode of delivery in an audio only format, but their entire program is centred on the most interesting and recognisable sounds! Like podcasts who go into the history of food, or to the back story and making of your favourite films? But Twenty Thousand Hertz dives deep into the history and back story of iconic sounds- sounds which are totally recognisable but perhaps you hadn’t paid it much heed, but you’ll be so much more aware of after listening to an episode all about It.?
In the very first episode of 20KHZ Dallas interviewed an actress who has one of the most well-known voices, but we most likely don’t know her name? Yes, the voice we know as SIRI- did you know that Siri was a real person? Who had recorded thousands and thousands of words for Apple, but why the voice sounds a bit robotic is because the audio recordings had the pitch adjusted upwards ultimately making her sound more digital than analogue. But when she is asked to put on the SIRI voice, it is unmistakingly her!
Or one of the first episodes which I listened to when I first stumbled upon the pod was a deep dive into what we popularly refer to as ‘Muzak’, that jazzy non-offensive (while equally uninspiring) music we hear coming out of the tinny speakers of elevators.
And the most recent episode I listened to, it was an investigation into the Whoopee Cushion, yes that pink rubber bladder which makes fart noises when someone sits on it!
Twenty Thousand Hertz is both informative and whimsical, enlightening and entertaining! So if there has been a sound which you’ve always wondered, ‘how did that come about?’ Dig through their archive, as they’ve probably covered it in a past episode (they have content dating back to 2016). And if you can’t find it there, you can email them about your ear-worm, and they’ll be more than happy to investigate and produce a future show based on your audio dilemma. Or if you’re one of those people who just enjoys the ‘Secret sound’ segment on radio, test your sound memory with their per-episode mystery sound! I thought I was good at recognising sounds, but I haven’t gotten one correct yet.
So if you find sound as fascinating as I do, check out Twenty Thousand Hertz, click HERE to begin listening!
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